Breathe: Seven Ways to Win a Greener World

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The best piece of advice I received was from my Dad. He once told me that it's really important that you work twice as hard to be considered half as good, and I still abide by that advice. It's advice that I know women and people from minority communities have received from their parents because often we do work incredibly hard and aren't recognised for doing so. There are no shortcuts - it's about hard work. So began our campaign to have a new inquest. It took four years to get a verdict, but when it came, it was transformative. In December 2020, coroner Philip Barlow concluded that toxic air had indeed played a role in Ella’s death. She became the first person in the UK to have “air pollution” listed as a cause of death.

The Breathe London Network, managed by Imperial College London and funded by the Mayor and Bloomberg Philanthropies and the boroughs, is an important part of Sadiq’s work to raise awareness of air pollution, making it easier for all Londoners to access reliable, localised, real-time air quality data. The additional sensors will bring the capital’s total to 322 sensors. The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan will today attend the unveiling of the final phase of artist Dryden Goodwin’s Breathe:2022 project, part of Lewisham’s year as the London Borough of Culture 2022. The Mayor created and funded the London Borough of Culture programme to improve access to culture, bring communities together and provide young Londoners with positive opportunities, with Lewisham the third borough to be awarded the title. The first point to make is that on a London scale, climate change in air quality proportionately affects the poorest people more than the wealthy people. So those least likely to own a car suffer the worst consequence of air pollution from those who own the car. The borough in our country with the largest amount of four-wheel drive vehicles is the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. They have one of the highest life expectancies because they drive their vehicles not in their patch but outside their patch. So it's an issue of social justice and racial justice. And so we've got to make it easy for people.

This article first appeared in the latest issue of the Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. Find out more. Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, founder of the Ella Roberta Family Foundation and World Health Organization Advocate for Health and Clean Air, said: “When we had the inquest, we got the experts in Ella’s case to give some recommendations and all of them agreed ULEZ expansion was something that needed to be done to clean up the air in London. For me, Ella humanised why the environment matters. Her short life forced people to face up to the invisible killer we all breathe every day. Ella shows that the climate emergency is a health crisis, too, and that we cannot wait to take action to clean up our air.

The cost of living crisis has obviously made it more difficult for people to be greener because they just can’t afford it… London’s network of air quality sensors is continuing to grow with an additional 131 air quality sensors set to be installed at hospitals, schools and other priority locations making it easier for all Londoners to access reliable, localised, real-time air quality data ULEZ expansion vital to improving air quality in the capital as expanded zone will cover an area 18 times larger than the existing central London ULEZ Above all, the inquest verdict hammered home why it was important to take the environment seriously. Through running the marathon I learned that climate change is a force that harms all of us – not people “over there” in the distant future. And I learned that London is filled with brilliant, thoughtful, motivated people who want to do their bit. People like Rosamund, who remains a fearsome campaigner but was, first and foremost, a mum to Ella.Items are left in our cloakrooms at the owner’s risk, and we cannot accept any responsibility for loss or damage, from any cause, to these items. We're cash-free of London’s most polluted hospitals have been awarded Breathe London air quality sensors and later this year other hospitals will have the option to buy in to the network at a subsidised cost. So I'm a progressive politician - I used to be a human rights lawyer, so one of the "good guys", right? Notwithstanding all that, I drove a Land Rover Discovery in London, and when I was a member of Parliament I voted to have a new runway at Heathrow Airport.

One of the things I’ve realised is that when people think of climate change, they think of it happening “over there” - in Sub-Saharan Africa, Bangladesh, or Islands in the West Indies. Or if it is happening to us, that it's in 30, 40 or 50 years' time.There is also a notable omission from Khan’s chapter headings: good old-fashioned denial. Khan argues that the era of climate denial is over, and that the people who formerly tried to cast doubt on the science have now accepted the consensus and have moved on to delaying climate action. It will operate London-wide across all London boroughs, up to the current Low Emission Zone (LEZ) boundary. New services and improvements, that will see over one million further kilometres added to the bus network, are also planned to support growth areas in a number of other outer London location. This is part of the biggest ever expansion of the bus network in outer London. Examples include: We're calling it a health crisis not only because it's a fact, but it's also a tactic. Because an environmental crisis gives the impression of altruism - “tomorrow”, “then”, “nice to have”. A health crisis is “me”, “us”, “now”.